Sprint Nextel Announces 4G Wireless Broadband Initiative With Intel, Motorola And SAMSUNG

Sprint Nextel Announces 4G Wireless Broadband Initiative With Intel, Motorola And SAMSUNG

Sprint Nextel Corp. (NYSE: S) today announced its plans to develop and deploy the first fourth generation (4G) nationwide broadband mobile network. The 4G wireless broadband network will use the mobile WiMAX (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access) IEEE 802.16e-2005 technology standard.

Working together with Intel, Motorola and Samsung, Sprint Nextel will develop a nationwide network infrastructure as well as mobile WiMAX-enabled chipsets that will support advanced wireless broadband services for computing, portable multimedia, interactive and other consumer electronic devices. These efforts are intended to allow Sprint Nextel customers to experience a nationwide mobile data network that is designed to offer faster speeds, lower cost, and greater convenience and enhanced multimedia quality.

The Sprint Nextel 4G mobility network will use the company’s extensive 2.5GHz spectrum holdings, which cover 85 percent of the households in the top 100 U.S. markets – the most of any wireless carrier in any single spectrum band. To access that network, Sprint Nextel will work with Intel, Motorola and Samsung to incorporate WiMAX technology for advanced wireless communications and help make chipsets widely available for new consumer electronics devices, connecting consumers to the Internet and to each other while providing them with the flexibility to do what they want or need to do regardless of time or place.

“None of us today can envision our lives without wireless connectivity or the Internet,” explained Gary Forsee, president and chief executive officer of Sprint Nextel. “Sprint Nextel is taking a major step forward by linking the incredible potential of these two cornerstones of daily communications. We’ll give customers the power to harness business information and personal entertainment easily and inexpensively — and in ways that they will one day wonder how they lived without.

This announcement is another step in Sprint Nextel’s broadband mobility leadership, and we expect to establish a first-to-market next generation network advantage. We will have a unique broadband capability for meeting the growing access and mobile Internet needs of businesses, governments and consumers when and where they want.”

Read the complete Press Release